A parent cooperative for young children

November 2010

November 2010:November is going to be a busy month at TCNS! We have a bunch of holidays in the coming weeks and some big fundraisers happening. We’ll strive to keep as much routine as possible for the children in the classroom to help balance the activity that often comes with the holiday season. This month the church will have the fire alarm system inspected. In anticipation, we will talk with the children about fire prevention and practice a fire drill in each class.
The weather is changing! Please be sure to dress your child warmly. Even though our playground is sheltered, hats and mittens are very useful to keep little bodies warm! Outside play is an important part of our day.
Remember, we’ll be collecting Halloween candy during the first week of November to send to troops overseas. During school we’ll be talking about sharing our candy with soldiers who don’t get to go trick-or-treating. This is a great way to reduce the amount your family consumes and do something good for others too!
We don’t have school on November 11th for Veteran’s Day and the 24th through the 26th for Thanksgiving. The next parent meeting will be Monday, November 15th at 6:30. We look forward to seeing so many families there!Parent-teacher conferences: we’ll set aside time on the 16th, 17th, and 18th between 11:30 and 12:00 for anyone interested in a mini-conference. More formal conferences will be scheduled in the spring, but this is a great chance to touch base if you’d like – watch for the sign-up.
Information on t-shirt and book orders will be in your child’s cubby soon! Both of those orders will be due back early in the month so assure you have everything before Thanksgiving. All of these things would make great gifts for friends and family!Fundraising: Gail Zabawsky will be doing a Pampered Chef fundraiser for our scholarship fund on Friday, November 5th from 8-11:30 in the chapel upstairs. It’s a great chance to get some early shopping done and a portion of the sales goes to TCNS. We will also be doing a scrip order in early November. This is a program that allows TCNS to earn a percentage of gift card sales purchased – another great way to shop for the holidays AND benefit TCNS! Check out the possibilities at http://www.glscrip.com. Fall bulb sales raised $925 for TCNS – THANKS!!Fun with Santa: please start getting those donations for the raffles and silent auction. The parents working on the auction are hoping to begin putting together the auction packages before Thanksgiving. If you have any silent auction questions, contact Tammy Murphy (MWF).November activities: We’ll start the month discussing healthy food and hygiene. We’ll read the Tooth Book by Dr. Seuss and talk about our candy donations, make toothpaste silly putty and do toothbrush painting. We’ll also read Firehouse by Mark Teague and introduce the children to the idea of fire drills and build a firetruck. Our next book will be the classic Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats. We’ll start talking about our families, compare family size, and how much we’ve grown and draw family portraits. The week before Thanksgiving we’ll read In November by Cynthia Rylant and Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland . We’ll talk about being thankful, make thank you cards, thanksgiving placemats and turkeys (of course) and bake pumpkins pie! After Thanksgiving we’ll talk about hibernation and read Go To Sleep Baby Bear by Frank Asch. We’ll make a bear, animal shelters and paper bag puppets.Terrific Twos: As the Terrific Twos move into November we have all become close friends. Each morning we begin our day with a sensory activity including playdough a classroom favorite. We have also experimented with oats and finger painting. At circle time we sing lots of songs but some favorites are “head, shoulders, knees and toes”,” I’ve got a name, you’ve got a name” and “itsy bitsy spider.” All children know all their friends names and can recognize their own name on our classroom tree. All of our leaves have changed colors and we added apples to our tree. Many of our friends are using the potty regularly and everyone is very proud! For our project time, painting is definitely our favorite activity. We paint with our hands, our fingers, paint brushes, stamps, sponges, anything! We also have introduced beads another classroom favorite.
In November we will be reading at circle time “Kittens First Full Moon” by Kevin Henkes and “Bear Feels Scared” by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, “Quick As A Cricket” by Audrey Wood and “Run, Turkey, Run” by Diane Mayer. Please remember to dress for outside play. We love going to the playground and will be outside as weather permits each day. We come back inside about 11:35 each day, this is very close to our 11:45 pick-up time, ready to snuggle up for quiet reading. Although dressing and undressing is time consuming so we may adjust our outside time to include reading a couple group books outside to prevent having to undress right before pick up time.
Thanks for sharing your children with us Tuesday and Thursday. Liz and I are enjoying our day with our Terrific Twos!